(Hello again. This is also done for my personal happiness but it was also done for the sake of the lovely first reviewer of this story. Thank you yet again for your kind words and I hope you enjoy. I own nothing and I hope you all enjoy, actually. God bless you all.)
Tyki had been puffing away wildly at three packs worth of cigarettes since it happened, still not entirely sure what to do with himself.
Sitting beside the current Noah of pleasure who bore his original face, the filthy street urchin called Tyki Mikk, Nea snatched up the pack of cigarettes from the man's hand and put a little white cigarette in his mouth.
The man complained that they were expensive, but he had hardly retained enough braincells to care.
"I have no answers." He said to the man quickly before Tyki could say another word.
Somehow, Nea thought it necessary for all to know that. Heck, he still hadn't fully accepted it, himself.
Yes, that is correct. The incredibly intelligent was losing the mind he treasured so much.
Nea D. Campbell had been brought so low by recent events, that he began to hardly care about anything at all anymore. Being indifferent to himself, the world, the war and those around him was definitely an understatement.
Nea suddenly began to doubt his reality, his identity and all he perceived to be fact. Perhaps that was what brought about this reaction.
That's why he silently sucked away at the end of the cigarette, fully intending to light it and smoke his fears and anxiety away in a little white cloud, where it would fly up into the atmosphere and never be seen again.
He sat there by the odd man's side for a while, silent and still, like a statue frozen still by his confusion.
The way he felt was so simple and yet so complicated. That shouldn't have been possible in his perfectly simplified equation but as Nea had said, he didn't have answers.
Perhaps, he thought, intelligence was fleeting just as beauty was.
That was the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
His dear mother was strong with wisdom. It did her nothing but good. She would kill him if she saw him smoking but he apparently knew no truth, so perhaps smoking wasn't as poor for one's health as he may have first thought.
He, on the other hand, was strong in knowledge, on the liquid facts of an ever changing reality. That being said, perhaps he knew what the world was once, but perhaps he never did.
Maybe if Nea was strong on wisdom like his mother, he would be able to properly understand and resolve the confliction inside him.
Perhaps then, the boy genius would finally understand what he needed to do now that his brother had returned.
But more than even that, he might just learn why his brother, his only twin, his Mana would give himself to the Black Order without a fight.
Why the brother he had just gotten back, after all this time, the brother who had betrayed Nea's trusted and hurt him, the brother who's smile haunted him like a ghost, would, despite the protests of the Noah, give himself over willingly to his greatest enemy.
But Nea had just watched him go. He watched Mana get pulled away, taken, stolen by a pack of crows he could have easily taken down if he had merely lifted a finger, but he didn't.
He just looked at him with tear streaked cheeks and smiled.
Before Nea even had time to react, he was gone.
What, was he trying to make up for all he had done Nea? Was he trying to fix consuming him, killing him and causing him so much pain all those years ago?
Did he think he would suddenly be forgiven for it all by running away?
But Nea didn't know. He didn't have any answers after all.
He didn't know what his brother was thinking, who had become in his absence, who Nea became in this second life, or why it filled with such rage and madness to think that Mana would be tortured and killed, destroyed slowly in the darkest depths of the Black Order.
It wasn't as though Mana's death was anything different from what he intended but was that important anymore? What had he promised on that day that remained consistent now?
This was a different time, but could it have been a different reality as well?
If so, how could he be sure of anything? The sun beating upon his skin and the taste of blood in his mouth? If all was relative in a fluid reality, how could he ever know what was real?
How did he know that Mana was genuine? That he should save him from the order? That he should remain in the clutches of those that would surely bring about his end? How did he know what was right or wrong? How did he even know which was right to follow?
This was the price someone like him had to pay for living his life by science, by facts.
It was simple. Like Nea had said, he had no answers. Thee facts and formulas he had once trusted in had failed him and the foundation of his frame of mind had now begun to crumble.
If he had listened to his mother all those years ago, perhaps he wouldn't be in this mess, but he hadn't. He was so concerned with an education to get him a place away from the dull countryside, he didn't have time to listen.
She would surely have a fit if she saw what had become of him now.
A small smirk found its way onto his lips.
But in remembrance for the woman, wherever she was, be she dead or alive, he recalled he speak of ridiculous things such as "Always believe" or "Listen to your heart".
She was a dreamer. No one could tame that about her.
Thinking back, since his recent heartbreak from the facts he loved so much, perhaps he needed to think a little bit less. Maybe he could rebound on dreams and feelings a bit till the facts got envious.
Like he said, those dreams gave her wisdom, facts beyond the realm of scientific laws. She never went to college, she never got straight A's in school, she was never called an intelligent genius.
All these things and yet she remained so sure of everything.
If he had become weak and feeble like a child, than following her example should not be too hard.
Listening to his heart, his bitter, broken, weak, numbed heart with hardly the strength to beat in his chest, he realized he still knew one thing.
Love.
As clear as any fact, as clear as the sun beating upon his skin and the tasted of blood in his mouth, Nea knew he loved Mana and if those feelings weren't recuperated by the other, he would never have risen from his slumber in the Earl's suit.
No matter what his other half did to others or himself, deep down Nea knew that would never change.
Rising from his seat by the Noah of pleasure, he spat the cigarette in the dirt.
The man asked him why, looking mildly offended but Nea cut him off.
"I'm going to save him." He whispered, "I'm going to save my brother."
A moments pause. Tyki looked bewildered beyond words, before he choked out the only thing he was capable of saying.
"What?" He asked.
"How the hell should I know." Nea smiled as as he turned to the man, "I don't have answers."
(Sort that this one is poorly written. I did try. Have a good day.)